The following discussion of the background art is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to was part of the common general knowledge as at the priority date of the application.
The inventor previously described a brick laying machine in U.S. Pat. No. 8,166,727. In practice, as described, this required a large road-going machine to implement.
An early prototype brick laying machine, based on that described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,166,727, and built by the inventor, used a chain conveyor with brick holding clamps attached to the chain. This chain moved from the base of the machine, out along a boom, to the laying head system. There was a small chain take up mechanism to take up variations in chain length due to changes in boom geometry. The take up mechanism also allowed some independence between the brick preparation and the laying, however the relatively short length of the take up mechanism meant that the brick preparation and the laying head needed to be synchronised at least some of the time. This meant that the slowest process limited the progress of bricks through the chain. Depending on the process of the current bricks being laid, either the brick preparation or the laying head could be the slowest process.
The chain followed a relatively complex path around the boom and telescopic stick so that as the telescopic stick was extended, the total chain length remained the same. The chain had brick griping clamps attached to it, so as it wrapped back and forth, it took up considerable space. If the telescopic stick had many stages, the amount of space taken up by the chain and grippers would greatly increase, making the boom and stick assembly larger than is desirable for road transport.
A brick conveyor using flat belts was investigated by the inventor. This required a substantially level orientation of the boom and telescopic stick and would require other means of moving the bricks vertically to accommodate for the change in laying height as the structure is built course by course. It was also determined that some cut bricks could be quite short compared to their height and would be unstable if transported on a flat belt conveyor. In the case of a telescopic stick and boom, dealing with excess belt length would encounter the same problems as the chain conveyor.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a brick laying machine that could be incorporated into a road-going vehicle, and would overcome at least some of the aforementioned problems, while maintaining the utility of the inventor's previously described machines.
Throughout the specification unless the context requires otherwise, the word “comprise” or variations such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated integer or group of integers but not the exclusion of any other integer or group of integers.
In this specification the word “brick” is intended to encompass any building element such as a brick or block, to be placed during the construction of a building or wall or the like.